Truly Astonishing

I am the 3rd person in the world to receive the @Neuralink brain implant.

1st with ALS. 1st Nonverbal.

I am typing this with my brain. It is my primary communication.

Ask me anything! I will answer at least all verified users!

Thank you @elonmusk! pic.twitter.com/bxYO3SBfA2

— Bradford G Smith (Brad) (@ALScyborg) April 27, 2025

 

This left only eight for the Gettysburg to deal with.

There's a lot happening in the Red Sea these days with not much coverage from the media.  From A Good Day For The Navy by J.R. Dunn.

The Houthis had launched a series of missile and drone attacks against the task force to no result. Now they decided on a concerted attack with a large number of missiles at once aimed at a single U.S. warship, hoping to overwhelm its defenses. The target was the USS Gettysburg.

The Gettysburg (CG-64) is a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, a veteran ship first launched in 1989. Sinking or heavily damaging a ship of this class could be presented as a major victory for the Houthis. Apart from that, there was the possibility that U.S. forces would retreat and give the Houthis a reprieve, something that might well have occurred under previous presidents like Obama or Biden.

The Gettysburg had endured a rough few months. On December 22, the ship mistakenly shot down an F/A-18 Hornet landing on the Truman while narrowly missing a second plane. After an investigation, in February, the Gettysburg’s captain was relieved and replaced. The ship was going into its first major combat under a new skipper.

I had read of the accidental shoot-down but had not seen any follow-up reporting.  

At around noon, the ship’s crew detected approaching Houthi missiles, a dozen of them closing in from different directions. The problem for the Gettysburg was that, after a long deployment, it was running short of missiles, particularly the SM-6 (Standard Missile), the weapon that acted as its main defense against attacks by aircraft and missiles. The ship was due for replenishment in a week, but until then, it had to make do.

The Gettysburg’s captain ordered two accompanying guided missile destroyers, the Stout and the Jason Dunham, to take down four of the missiles that were trailing behind the first wave. This left only eight for the Gettysburg to deal with.

Still concerned about the number of remaining defensive weapons, particularly in light of the possibility that the missile attack might be followed by a wave of drones, the captain decided on a bold tactic. Navy doctrine called for launching two missiles at each incoming threat to assure that they were taken out. Instead, the captain fired only single SM-6s at the closest six Houthi missiles. Since the probability of a kill from any single interception is a little over 90%, there was a distinct chance that one would get through and have to be dealt with by short-range missiles or Phalanx anti-aircraft cannons.

This time it worked — all six incoming missiles were splashed a good distance from the ship.

That left two other missiles to be taken care of. Rather than play it safe, the Gettysburg’s captain doubled down. Along with the SM-6s, the cruiser had a number of RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles, descended from a venerable air-to-air missile. Although much faster than the SM-6s at a top speed of Mach 4 (3,000+ mph), the Sea Sparrows were considered useful only as point defense weapons — last-ditch ordnance used only after more potent weapons had failed. But the Gettysburg was going to use them as a substitute for the diminishing number of SM-6s.

As the Sea Sparrows launched, weapons crews watched their scopes tensely. Within seconds, both successfully intercepted the Houthi missiles, destroying them ten miles from the ship.

Little was heard from the Houthis the rest of the day. The Gettysburg resumed its operations a short time later.

Great storytelling about a critical theater of conflict.  With a message in there that isn't getting the attention it should.  We are necessarily stretching out military and military supply chain.  With conflicts in Ukraine, in the Middle East and active threats in the East, all our assets and all our people are in constant rotation and use.  All our supply chains are having to flex.  

South Korea, for instance, has three times as many active military personnel as Britain, the strongest of the European military powers. Malaysia’s army, meanwhile, is twice the size of Britain’s.

A usefully argued piece from the new media out of Europe, The end of Europe’s ‘soft power’ delusion, Part 1 by A Gibson.  

Importantly, this paradigmatic shift eastwards, away from Europe, is not a new development. The writing has been on the wall for decades, becoming ever more vivid through successive administrations; but only now is it being read aloud by the United States, catalysed by the emboldened mandate of this second Trump administration. Through decades of wrongheaded policymaking, European nations have rendered themselves strategically useless to the United States – indeed, the region is now proving to be actively burdensome, as Vance and Hegseth made clear. By contrast, Asian countries at the interface with China, such as India, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia, are now key regional allies with burgeoning economies, pragmatic governments and surprisingly powerful conventional militaries. South Korea, for instance, has three times as many active military personnel as Britain, the strongest of the European military powers. Malaysia’s army, meanwhile, is twice the size of Britain’s.

By contrast, European militaries are chronically short of service personnel, armoured vehicles, ships and aircraft. Indeed, the United States’ military budget utterly dwarfs that of all European nations combined. Thus, in reality, the Nato alliance consists of the might of the United States’ military, with a few European divisions, and possibly Turkish forces, bolted on. Moreover, Europe’s defence industries are fragmented, depleted and dependent on far more advanced American technologies. So deep-rooted are the problems that the touted grand European rearmament launched in response to Vance’s Munich speech is unravelling already.

Critically, the root cause of this military weakness is the now-entrenched industrial decline of the major European economies. Germany’s long-stable manufacturing industries are in crisis, with soaring unemployment; France is mired by astronomical debt and an unemployment rate of 7.3 per cent; welfare spending has swollen to unsustainable rates in all major European nations, depleting public funds and sapping productivity; and the euro has trended sharply downwards against the dollar for years.

Furthermore, as an excellent piece of research by Bloomberg has shown, not only are European economies collectively far smaller than those of the United States and China, but they have fallen well behind qualitatively as well. Europe is severely lacking in dispersed start-up entrepreneurship and frontier technological innovation. There is nothing in Europe that resembles Silicon Valley or the equivalent Chinese big-tech industry. Part of the problem has been the stifling effect of long-term over-regulation, much of it generated by decree from the European Union.

The whole piece is worth reading.

This Quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies

This Quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies

By Emily Dickinson

This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies

And lads and girls;

Was laughter and ability and sighing,

And frocks and curls;

This passive place a summer's nimble mansion,

Where bloom and bees

Fulfilled their oriental circuit,

Then ceased like these.

History

getting government funding out of science is not an attack on science, it is a liberation of it.

this is exactly what ike warned us about in his farewell address:

that a small unaccountable group in government would come to dominate the funding of scientific research and… https://t.co/FLwKZfSq3L pic.twitter.com/E3XTBdwqmt

— el gato malo (@boriquagato) March 14, 2025

 

An Insight

Marcus Aurelius said this 2,000 years ago. It still holds up. pic.twitter.com/MgBuczatVu

— Seneca the Younger | Stoic Philosophy ✍️ (@SenecaQuote) March 14, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

How slugs drink.

📽: Steve Downerpic.twitter.com/yPI3KA83FV

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) March 13, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

Alaska’s Passive Aggressive Map of the United States pic.twitter.com/TlHXhp3OAy

— Terrible Maps (@TerribleMaps) March 13, 2025

 

Data Talks

Most externalities are solved with technology, not coordination!

Deeply insightful post from @MTabarrok that actually should overturn a lot of how Econ 101 is taught.

If only someone in his family were co-author of a popular undergraduate textbook! pic.twitter.com/ARGbmF5gNk

— Eli Dourado (@elidourado) March 14, 2025

 

Interior with Staircase by Hendrik Willem Mesdag

Interior with Staircase by Hendrik  Willem Mesdag (Netherlands, 1831-1915) 

Click to enlarge.